Sunday, May 10, 2009

so much for posting more. When do people find the time for that anyway?

So, it's going well. The boys are half way done with their new level of MUS. The prophet should be caught up by High School! The Peacemaker will be caught up by next year. I guess they just needed some time.

Handwriting is going well for both of them. Since, they both finished their books we are finally getting in more copywork. I love copywork. They may not, but it's so useful. I really wish I had been doing more of this all along. Next year there will be copywork for everyone. And, dictation for the oldest one.

The Warrior is really getting into reading. It's given us the opportunity to continue some speech work, as well. I've been hoping he will be reading by September, although I would love if he could "get it" by the time the baby comes in July. But, I may be overly hopeful with the last bit. He is still very interested in writing things down, so I think there is some kind of learning thing going on with using his hands.

So far, the Prophet is a reader, the Peacemaker is visual and artistic learner, and I'm wondering if the Warrior will need to write things down to get it. It's interesting to see how different they are.

We are implementing more of schedule/routine to our day. I've been using the scanner my mom gave me to make little packets of Math work, so they know exactly how much work they have this week. Overall school is going a lot better and we are learning a lot more. So, although I wasn't sure if doing more schoolish type work would go over well...I think we needed some time for it to sink in and find a plan we could take on.

We made it to SOTW 2, as well. We did quite a bit of Middle Ages stuff via KONOS when they were younger. I'm borrowing the book from the library and we are going through more chapters per week than normal. I would like to get into the SOTW 3 and SOTW 4 for my oldest in middle school. So, it seems like we are rushing. But, we are spending greater chunks of time on it during the day. We try to get a History Scribe or other notebook page and some copywork or narrations done for each chapter. Plus, we are reading an eyewitness book and discussing a lot. Things seem to be sticking enough. We dragged SOTW 1 out for almost 2 years and that was way too much.

I went ahead and ordered the new copy of The Well Trained Mind. I don't have a copy, so I always make notes and send it back to the library. But, I really think if this is going so well, that it would be nice to have something to reference back to. It got here right before Mother's Day which I thought was a good sign.